Chiaroscuro
by AmicableAlien
Summary: The three times Anthony Strallan was a coward and the one time he wasn't...
1. Chapter 1

**CHIAROSCURO**

* * *

 _November, 1943_

 _Rome, Italy._

* * *

The _Kriminalinspektor_ adjusted the set of his black gloves with studied care. It was three in the afternoon, the weak November sun fighting through the great bay windows of his office. Despite this, the man was dressed for the darkest Berlin winters, in full leather greatcoat and black gloves. His head, pale with thinning blonde hair, shone like marble. His face was granite.

"We require only your cooperation."

The man in the chair opposite blinked. The Gestapo agent tried once more.

"It is known that you associate with members of the Resistance. It is known that you have sympathies with your countrymen."

The man in the chair blinked once more. A beard, four days in the making, crusted the lower half of his face. Under it, a trail of bruises stomped black and blue feet from his cheek to the withered expanse of his frail chest. His suit, once fashioned from the hands of the finest tailor on the _Viale Giuseppe Manzini,_ was a mess of wrinkles and stains the lowest begger in the street would scorn to wear.

He had been in solitary confinement since the previous Monday.

Still, he straightened. Slowly. Muscle by muscle. Washed-pale blue eyes focussed on the implacable face. " _Mi dispiace, signore, ma sono..."_

"Yes, yes. I am aware. Your _former_ countrymen. But we will dispense with the petty distinctions."

A ghost of a smile shone through the straggling beard. The useless hand, limp and dead on his filthy trouser leg, twitched once. " _Also, Herr Kriminalinspektor,_ " He observed in faultless German, "You have never been a diplomat for your country."

"Unlike you. Yes." The smile resembled nothing so much as a shark, baring its teeth before racing for the kill. He too switched to German, the throaty words falling like a snake's hiss from his lips. "We do know of your service in the days of the Second Reich. Our records are impeccable."

"I have had that experience."

"Then you will understand that this show of courage is nothing. We are the Gestapo, Sir Anthony Strallan. We know everything."

* * *

" _We know everything, Strallan."_

 _The chink of the decanter against the brandy balloon sounded like a prison door shutting._

 _Colonel Laverty was a man of Anthony's own age. Distinguished, greying at the temples. He had kept his figure- he looked twenty years younger in his field greens, particularly when viewed from the back. As Commander of the regiment, he exuded authority like a man throwing out his shadow. Always present, always properly aligned. Perfect._

 _The leather lounge chair creaked a little under his sparse weight. Laverty cradled the balloon between sparse fingers for a minute. Weighing the alcohol along with his words._

 _It was with difficulty that Anthony kept from fidgeting. The pain in his healing fingers ached like a tooth biting through to the bone._

 _"I don't expect you to... to confess it. Frankly, I would rather we avoided scenes of that sort. But the nature of the injuries and the reports given to me by Dr Jefferies..." Laverty gestured towards the still bandaged hand._

 _"You're not the first, Strallan. We have seen other men like you."_

You have shot other men like me, you mean.

 _"I'm afraid I don't quite know what to say, Colonel."_

 _"Nothing is usually best, Strallan. Under the circumstances."_

 _They both sipped from the brandy. It tasted of bile in Anthony's mouth._

 _The room was not an office. He could be grateful for that, for the privacy with which Laverty had chosen to conduct this most painful of interviews. It was a library, part of an old chateau that the British Army had requisitioned in near Paris for use as a strategic retreat for the general staff. A place for the officers to civilise themselves with books and brandy and conversation before returning to the brutal mud and roaring screams of death that made up the Front Lines._

 _He used to dream of being a soldier, back when he was a boy. His Nanny had a brother who served in India. He'd lived on stories of daring dashes through the Khyber Pass, stalwart last stands against the dervishes and pashas of Afghanisatan. When the Boer War was ongoing, he had devoured every newspaper clipping he could grasp that wrote about the dusty, far-away conflict._

 _It had seemed so wonderful, so glorious, back in the quiet library in Locksleigh House. He would look up from the dry print to the Reubenesque mural cavorting across the ceiling. The_ Spartans at Thermopylae _. Family history had it that Leonidas was modelled on the second Baronet Strallan, back when the painting was first commissioned in the 1790s. He had served in the American war, returning with a distinctive scar across his right hand. The same scar was replicated in Leonidas._

 _Anthony had a scar on his right hand now, too. It was not the same._

 _Laverty tapped his middle fingers against the glass. He looked every where in the room but at Anthony's face._

 _"In light of your service before the war, it has been resolved that you shall take an administrative post. GHQ, Paris. The committee resolved it would be best not to demote you from your rank. The morale of the regiment... if it were known that an_ officer _had..."_

 _"Yes."_

 _Humiliation existed in the unfinished half-sentences._

 _"You will not see front line duty again, Strallan. That was agreed. Personally..." The aristocratic nostrils flared. A brief crack in the stiff upper lip of the officer class. Disgust, disdain and disquiet._ If it were known that an _officer_ had...

" _I understand."_

 _"Quite."_

 _There seemed little to say after that. Anthony drained his glass and set it down on the sidetable. The polished wood barely clinked under the expensive crystal. He sketched a salute to the still-seated Laverty but it was a clumsy thing, done with his left hand. He turned to leave._

 _"I feel constrained to tell you that certain among the committee pushed for a court martial."_

 _Laverty's voice cut in through the crackling flames and the ticking clock like a knife thrust._

 _Anthony stilled, halfway to the doorway. He did not turn around. Like a man pinned to the whipping post, he waited for the next strike._

 _"You know how the verdict would have gone in that case. Your title saved you. Last of a long line, distinguished service all..." The leather creaked again. A chink of glass on glass. Brandy sloshing in a balloon, as though to wash the bile away from Laverty's mouth._

 _"How would it go if all were to know that you were a coward?"_

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**CHIAROSCURO**

* * *

 _November, 1943_

 _Rome, Italy_

* * *

The headquarters of the SS in the Eternal City was not a prepossessing building. In a city of cupolas and basilicas, where Baroque curlicues mingled with the overweening arrogance of Roman columns and arches, 145 _Via Tasso_ was a plain, pale yellow stucco block. No murals decorated the rectangular windows. No curves softening the ruler-sharp lines of the architecture. Everything was functional and unadorned.

Before the war, it had been used as the Cultural Office of the embassy of the Third Reich. Since September, it had been used as a prison.

In the whole city, Anthony thought, there was no other building better suited to it. But then, the Germans were famed for their practicality. _Il Duce_ 's Blackshirts preferred to operate in the elegance of the _Palazzo Venezia._

The cells of the Gestapo Headquarters varied, or so he had heard. The second floor housed the important prisoners, the ones the Gestapo in their inscrutable wisdom, treated with a modicum of respect. The third, lesser prisoners, less deserving of respect.

The basement held the interrogation rooms and the holding cells. It was commonly agreed that there was little distinction made between those rooms. Both were painted a cheap, rust-red. Anthony's neighbour whispered through the bars of his window that the paint was used to hide the bloodstains.

Anthony had been to the basement twice since his unsuccessful meeting with the _Kriminalinspektor._ He told his neighbour with confidence that the Gestapo's efforts at masking the bodily fluids did not work.

Most of the time, however, he was left alone.

The room of his cell was painted a utilitarian white. White walls, white ceiling. White door, the paint flaking to reveal the iron underneath. Here and there, graffiti showed. The German occupation was less than two months old but Anthony counted eighteen different handwriting samples along the wall.

Most shouted out _Viva Italia! Viva la Resistenza!_ Long live Italy! Long live the Resistance! Some were simply names and dates. One person had scrawled poetry. It was good and, Anthony thought, original.

He, who had once studied art, now studied handwriting. And wondered what had happened to those men and women who left their mark behind.

The solitary confinement continued.

Once or twice, Anthony considered asking for a priest. He was still Church of England. At least, he had attended the services organised at the British embassy. When the British ambassador departed, when the embassy's doors were bolted up and he was forced to choose, did he then, Anthony wondered, in ceding from British citizenship, also cease to be a member of its church? Would the Gestapo believe him, when he asked for religious succour? Would they believe that he lay in fear for his immortal soul?

No. Probably not.

They would be wrong, of course.

His neighbour, an opera singer from Puglia and a suspected Jew, chanted rosaries every night. Perhaps he thought the more prayers he said, the chance that he would be ignored, even released would increase too. Perhaps he wanted divine intervention. In this city, people would always believe in that.

Anthony would listen to the man's _Ave Marias_ for hours at a time, staring up at the shapes the letters made across the rough whitewash of the wall. If he stared long enough, through the bloodied slits that were once his eyes, he could pick out paintings from them. Landscapes. Battle epics.

Portraits.

* * *

 _I_ _t had been in the Long Gallery that he saw her again._

 _Anthony was not a man who favoured portraits. He enjoyed the detail of Dutch genre painters, he appreciated the fine lines and stylistic approach of religious triptychs and icons. Like every Englishman of his acquaintance, he had a soft spot for the cloudy, limitless landscapes in the style of Gainsborough or Turner. Even Landseer's soft-eyed hunting dogs had come under favourable review when he corresponded with the other members of the London Artistic Appreciation club._

 _Portraits, he had found, were too personal. There was something unnerving about the direct stare from a pair of painted eyes. As though they said:_ Hundreds like you have looked upon me. I know you all.

She _used to enjoy portraits._

 _She would wonder at the stories behind them, the people and their lives. She had an inexhaustible interest in the world that thrived around her. How many times had they travelled in his motor through the countryside,_ she _sitting at his side and regaling him with the minute details of the families and farms that pass by the windows. She saw things he had never considered and possibilities where he had been convinced none existed._

 _Perhaps that was why she, of all the county, had looked at him, battered and broken and had seen a future instead of burden._

 _She had been wrong, of course. But it was swee_ _t, so temptingly sweet to believe her. At least until he had come to his senses._

 _Anthony no longer wondered at the nineteenth-century romantics and their escape to the dream worlds of laudanum. If he had half their daring and courage, he would do the same. Dreams, of the soft, idyllic variety, were the stuff that made life bearable. Reality, in the form of hard print on discharge cards and slanted handwriting on an affidavit, was harsh and so often unkind._

 _He had not wanted her to face an unkind world. He had tortured himself for weeks imagining it. Seeing the soft, vulnerable lower lip tremble against the slights the world would throw at them. Seeing her eyes widen and disgust fill their depths as, inch by inch, she realised the nature of the man she had married. Not a hero. Not a gentleman. Simply, him._

 _Living the agony once, the gentle deadening of a marriage from the inside out, sent his hands-_ hand- _trembling and nausea rising in his gorge._

 _He had run to London after... after. Paris, for a while. New York, Berlin. Reliving old haunts, speaking with old acquaintances. People who had little idea of his_ modus operandi _for the past few years except for the death of his wife and his retreat to the country. He had written articles for_ The American Magazine of Art _, the_ Times _, even a brief, light satire in the_ Sketch _. All under a pseudonym, naturally._

 _Despite the urgings of friends like Simon Bricker and Marco Bianchi, Anthony wavered before putting his head above the parapet. He told himself it was to protect_ her _, so she would not be confronted with old memories in her morning newspaper. It was not the truth but it was the truth he was comfortable to believe._

 _He was never certain, when he thought on the incident over later years, why he had gone to the Long Gallery that day. Fate? Kismet? He had stood in front of the wry-faced portrait of Sir Francis Walsingham, hands clasped behind his back. The new Homburg hat shaded his face from general viewing. Dressed in a great-coat of pale khaki and a dark suit, he was indistinguishable from the other drifters wandering about the halls._

 _It was no wonder that_ she _did not see him._

 _He saw her. Not seeing her would, for him, be like trying to deny the sun's rays._

 _She was dressed in one of the new fashions, a billowing sea-green coat. Her hair was hidden under a neat little cloche, the brim turned up to reveal her wide eyes and the straight, neat line of her nose. He could barely see the curls he remembered every night, a deep strawberry-blonde like the Welsh gold ring he had picked out for their wedding._

 _He stood. Frozen in space. Terrified to move. To breathe._

She walked differently _, was the first dazed thought that slid through his brain. His Edi- The Lady Edith Crawley he remembered had tripped along like a girl. Every step she took, she had seemed to poise on her toes, as though testing the waters before committing herself to the action. The same nerves had played out in the vulnerable trembling of her full lower lip and delicate chin. It was the combination of uncertainty and tentative daring that captivated Anthony. When he was with her, he felt the courage he had always lacked. He was the stronger one, the experienced one and he would shield her from the dangers that swam beneath her small, probing feet._

 _The lady in front of him strode forward with a decisive clip of her dainty heels. More than her steps, it was her carriage, the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her firm chin that exuded an air of... confidence?_

 _No, Anthony thought, withdrawing a few steps ahead to avoid coming into her line of sight. Not confidence. Fearlessness. The steady pace did not merge with the untried woman he had known and loved. Woman? She had been a girl, his Edith. A sheltered girl. It was the woman, not the girl, who paced down the Long Gallery that day._

 _And she was angry._

 _"Mr Gregson, I really think that you are becoming truly... truly..."_

 _A laugh. Anthony could not see from where. Dared not swivel round to guess._

 _"Shame on you, my lady. I thought you had a better grasp of adjectives than this? Why on earth do you think I enjoy your column?"_

 _The voice- a man's voice- lowered to a murmur. It carried across the hall to Anthony's ears like a siren's song._

 _"And, as I have told you countless times before- it's Michael."_

 _"Mr Gregson-"_

 _"Lady Edith."_

 _"Oh, do stop that!"_

 _"Stop, my lady?"_

 _A short silence. Then, she spoke again. In the glass, Anthony saw her resettle the velvet purse that dangled from her slender wrist. The voice was patient, if a little strained and he was plunged back to another room, other paintings and the same, strained, patient voice explaining_ precisely _why all his fears of an unequal match were unfounded, untrue and utterly unimportant._

 _"I cannot attend the party with you. You are... in your situation and in mine, people would make certain assumptions."_

 _"Assumptions that I want to marry you? Well, then, they are only correct."_

 _"Michael!"_

 _"Edith."_

 _The scoundrel, the... the damned ink-smeared reprobate shifted into Anthony's line of sight. His hat was tilted back. A rakish angle, Anthony thought with a spurt of viciousness that surprised him. A thin, boney face, alight with energy swam in the mist of the glass panes._

 _A rat. That had been Anthony's first impression of the ever-moving, rapid-fire editor of the_ Daily Sketch _when he had attended on the man a few months previously for a column or two. A long, russet-hued rat, bristling with the unabashed ambition of the_ nouveau riche. _There were rumours, Marco had whsipered in his ear later, of a mad wife locked away in an asylum. Truly gothic stuff that made decent society shudder and forced the man from its arms into his raffish bohemian circles._

 _The scoundrel dropped his head in a tilt of amusement. "My darling, if it's not perfectly obvious by now, you may declare me shocked."_

 _"You shouldn't say such things!"_

No, you damn well should not, _Anthony thought. His fingers curled into a fist in the pocket of his greatcoat. He wanted to stride over there and give the presumptuous little scribbler a piece of his mind. He wanted to send the man packing, preferably with a fist to jaw for daring to importune such a delicate... a kind, gentle.._

 _But what then?_

 _He imagined the horror in Edith's wide eyes when she beheld him. Saw the shock transfigure into disgust. Rejection. Disdain. The man who abandoned her to the humiliation of her friends and family- no matter that he did it for the best of reasons, no matter that it broke his own heart to sacrifice it thus- crashing like a wounded boar into her new life, her new lo-_

 _He could not think it. The pain that ripped through him froze every impulse, every muscle. Had the Day of Judgement come then and there, Anthony would not have moved a step in either direction. Could not._

 _He watched the glass, his stomach cramping as though claws scraped along the inside of his flesh. Saw the reprobate, the man who dared, step forward until his shoulder was in line with hers. Until his hand disappeared behind her back and Anthony knew, he_ knew _that the scoundrel had pressed his palm to the slight curve of Edith's spine, the delicate structure of vertebrae and cords that could be felt- only lightly but God! he could feel it still- through the masking weight of coats and clothes._

 _"Darling," Michael Gregson tilted his head down to the side. The brim of his trilby brushed the tip of Edith's cloche. "You pretend to care for what society sees but I think several months of correspondance should give me the right to say differently."_

 _Edith opened her lips. The man forestalled her._

 _"You are fearless."_

 _God, it was true._

 _Anthony saw it now. It crumbled before his eyes, distorting shapes and fractals in the glass. The wide-eyed surprise, the uncertainty of the soft lip. Then the blaze of happiness, of rightness in the face of a woman who finally understood her worth. And her worth was so much more than he could have imagined and so much more than he could have offered her._

 _The image blurred and distorted. A burning prickled at his eyes. His heart screamed at him to turn around, to add his own admiration to the that of Gregson's. To seize the chance, whatever the consequences to the contrary and try, one last time, to defy convention for happiness..._

 _No._

 _Anthony Strallan turned up the collar of his greatcoat and strode from the Long Gallery._

 _He did not stop until he was out on the street, the cold blast of an autumn wind making an adequate excuse for the burning wetness that threatened at his eyes._

* * *

 _ **Unrequited love is always fun to write. And Anthony is a great figure for stoic agony, particularly of the heart haha!**_

 _ **I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I know it's been long in coming- work stresses and procrastination as well as my feeble excuse that I needed to brush up on my Downton lore a bit (thank you wikia ;-) ) There are still two more chapters so I hope you enjoy and stick with it.**_

 _ **I've never written andith (to be honest, I like Edith's pairings with Gregson and Bertie a bit more but I think that's because I'm prejudiced against blondes, being one myself) Let me know if it hits the mark or flails wildly away. I'm always up for trying a second time in a one-shot!**_

 _ **Also, hope any Gregson/Edith supporters out there enjoyed that bit of fluff!**_

 _ **Thanks again for reading all the way to here!**_


	3. Chapter 3

**CHIAROSCURO**

* * *

 _November, 1943_

 _Rome, Italy_

* * *

They gave him a priest.

He was a Catholic priest: what else could one expect in Rome? A tall, creased Irishman with a jut of a nose and round spectacles. He filled the doorway of Anthony's cell like a Bosch depiction of death in his floor-sweeping cassock. He spoke Italian like an opera singer thrilling Verdi. His English- if one could call it that- swung into play like some long-forgotten ancient growl.

The _Kommandant_ who hovered at the priest's shoulder flicked his eyes between the two men. Like his underling, _his_ English was impeccable, if a touch too stilted to be taken seriously. A true Teuton, Anthony thought, his mind rising and falling to consciousness, like a dying animal struggling to its feet. Correct, stiff and self-concious. The music halls would have a field day on his caricature.

The thought made him smile, a drift of amusement on his battered face. The priest seemed to take this as encouragement.

"Come now, _Obersturmbannführer_ Kappler." He boomed, rapping his raw-boned knuckles on the leather cover of his Bible. "Can you not see the poor man is in need of the comfort of God? A fine good Catholic boy like him?"

Anthony had not been called a boy in years. Certainly not by a bog-trotter who, despite the deep array of wrinkles under his round spectacles and the raw redness of his large nose, was several years his junior. More than that, his parents, God-fearing, Papist-hating Anglicans as they had been, would be horrified to hear the nineteenth Baronet Strallan enfolded within the cloak of the Roman church.

Anthony tried to speak up. The effort choked at his bruised throat. It came out as a series of splutters, that made his chest ache and shuddered through his thin limbs. Food had not been so appetising when one's jaw ached too much to chew it.

The men at the door jumped at the interruption. Of course they did, Anthony's brain sighed. Dogs fighting over a bone did not expect the bone to react to their scuffles.

The priest was the first to recover.

"Well then!" He declared, once again lapsing into unintelligible English. "Do you see that, _meine Herren_? The man is so moved by the Holy Spirit, he wants to confess."

"Confession is permitted only for such prisoners awaiting the death penalty for treason." The _Kriminalinpsektor,_ the same one who had interrogated Anthony the first day, stepped forward as though to bar the priest's passge. "It is not in the regulations for such... such..."

"The state of a man's soul is not governed by regulations, _mein Herr!"_

"I must protest-"

"Protestations be damned. Would you prevent me in my pastoral duty?" A black-sheathed arm flung out a finger in Anthony's direction, like the dread finger of death itself. "Will you damn a man to face the fear and awe of the holy Lord with the sins of his life hanging upon him like chains? The man can not _breathe.._ for the weight of his agony. _"_

A slight, pregnant pause. The bright eyes behind the spectacles raked the Gestapo officials in front of him. To Anthony's surprise, the younger _Kriminalinspektor_ shifted his feet. His eyes dropped to the floor, like a choir boy sneaking the communion wine.

Kappler- Anthony recognised the head of the hated _SS_ from the icicle—thin line of his eyebrows over a jutting forehead- pursed his lips. He was not so cowed by the dignity invested in a cassock and crucifix.

"A soldier will be on guard in the room at all times." He clipped. "Regulations, Monsignor."

"Not mine, _Obersturmbannführer_. The confessional is a sacred space."

"Regardless. This man is a suspected double-agent, a spy and a traitor. What religious scruples he may retain when all others have gone? _Also._ Heuth!"

"Yes, Herr _Obersturmbannführer_."

The lackey sprang to attention. Awkward, Anthony thought, no grace. The sigh he gave at the thought, sucked blood from his lungs in a rattle.

"Find a soldier, set him on guard. He is to escort the Monsignor from the building after this Strallen has finished his mumbling. You will understand, Monsignor O.."

"O'Flaherty." The surname was given with a saccharine smile.

"Of course. You will understand I must limit your time in this building. One half-hour. It is acceptable?"

The priest, O'Flaherty, looked as like to swallow burning hellfire coals. But one thing that would withstand even the centuries of Catholic majesty and pomp was German time-keeping. "God willing, if I must."

"Excellent." The priest's sarcasm melted like a splash of water against a bonfire. "See to it, Heuth."

The _Kriminalinspektor_ attempted to click his heels as Kappler swept from the room. It came out dull and he shot another look to O'Flaherty, as though expecting an admonishment. He scurried out in Kappler's wake, shouting at someone in the corridor to restore his dignity.

The priest waited a beat. Then cassock skirts spun. In a whirl of black cloth, he swept over to Anthony's side. Gone was the bluff cleric of a few minutes past. The sharp blue eyes flashed behind the round spectacles. The confessions this man demanded, Anthony thought, were more serious than a few impure thoughts or petty theft.

"We don't have much time." He switched back English, a harsh hiss too low to be overheard by the guard in the corridor. "Quickly, man. Fredricks told me you'd know where they are. Tell me."

Of course. Anthony drew in a slow breath, weariness breaking his shoulders down to the mattress. He swivelled his eyes over to the door, left open and exposed to any passing ear.

"Have courage, man. They can't do worse to you. Tell me where they are." O'Flaherty's eyes burned with a light Anthony doubted he would ever match. "For God's sake, have courage!"

* * *

" _They have such courage, do they not?"_

 _Anthony turned his head from observing the battle epic to the neat, precise man beside him. As always with the Italians, he was dressed to the sharpest cut of fashion. Three years of war and innumerable attempts by Il Duce's fascists to dispossess him of every lira he owned had made little impact on Marco Bianchi._

 _The only false note of the luxurious ensemble was the yellow star of cheap cotton pinned to the right sleeve of his suit. Government issue. Part of the new spurt of camaraderie between Mussolini and the German army camped at Italy's borders._

 _Typical of Marco, in one of those little jokes he put forward at the most inopportune of times, he had offered to replace the star with a more elegant one of yellow silk. The joke had earned him a punch in the face from one of Mussolini's Blackshirts who proceeded to relieve the Bianchis of a priceless Tintoretto sketch to further soothe the sting of the insult._

 _The state had been nibbling away at the Bianchis' extensive collection of_ objets d'art _since 1938. That was what happened in Italy when one was rich and Jewish and the state was run by a xenophobic, fascist dictator._

 _It could be worse, Marco had pointed out, six months earlier, when Anthony urged him to leave for the hundredth time. If they had been in Germany or Austria, they would already be dead or in camps. "_ Non preoccuparti _, Antonio,_ amico mio _. Do not worry. Where there is life, there is hope, no?"_

" _It's only a matter of time, Marco." Anthony bent forward over the filigreed tabletop of terrace tea set. In the distance, nieces and nephews screamed and laughed amongst the formal gardens of the Bianchis' Romagna villa. "Leave, Marco. Leave while you still can. Your family has money, connections in America…"_

" _America!" With the arrogance of the old Romans, Marco puffed away the new continent. "Where is their culture in America, their history? Their frescos, their statues, their monuments to the ages? No, Antonio, I am Italian. I was born in Rome, I will die there."_

" _But it may come sooner here than there."_

" _Death comes to us all,_ mio amico _." Marco had sipped at his lemonade, the twirls of his moustache twitching with the movement. "It is you, I think, are in the greater danger."_

" _I'm an old dog." Anthony sat back. His light linen suit was pleasantly cool in the late Roman spring. May of 1942 had been a gentle time, despite the terrifying news reports that crackled nightly over the waves of his illegal radio. "And there's nothing for me back in England."_

 _Not for years. Not since he say the announcement in the_ Times _\- the paper six weeks out of date, the deed already done and consummated- of Edith's marriage. The Marquis of Hexham, no less. A war hero, an upstanding young man._

 _He had contacted his agent to sell Strallan house the following day. Italy had been home ever since._

 _Marco reached over and touched the top of Anthony's hand_. "Povero Antonio. _So brave and yet many ghosts."_

" _I'm not a brave man." A brave man would have damned the Blackshirts when they arrived at his elegant flat in the Trastevere the day after Italy followed Germany into the war against Britain. A brave man would have returned to home shores, offered his pitiful services to the War Office and did what he could to support his countrymen in this dreadful battle._

 _Anthony had done neither. Quietly, he had accepted the offer of Italian citizenship, a token in respect of his time teaching at the Accademia di Belle Arti. Quietly, he had accepted the invitations offered by Mussolini's_ nouveau riche _officers who liked the elegant Englishman to adorn their dinner parties. Quietly, he remained in Rome, buffered from the outside world by his friendships, his writing and the beauty created by better men past._

" _You misjudge yourself, my friend." Marco shook his head. The tips of his fingers were chilled from the cool lemonade. "You have the courage of a heart that loves too well."_

 _Now, far from the idyll of the Villa Bianchi, the two men stood side-by-side once again. This time, despite his dapper suit and the jaunty twist to his moustache, Anthony could see the stresses wearing down on his friend. Dark circles like punches ringed both of Marco's blackbird eyes. The old confidence was dented. His friend seemed to shrink into the confines of his coat._

 _For the first time, since he met Marco when they were boys on the Grand Tour, Anthony could see the Jew in him._

 _For a moment, he recalled images from a photography exhibition he attended at New York, still-life sets of recent emigrants through the Ellis Island processing station. Tired old men, refugees from one Russian pogrom or another, staring at the camera with uneasy eyes. Greasy curls hanging over worn-down faces, the weariness of constant fear grinding them down so they seemed suffocated by the floor-length coats they wore. Hated for a reason they could not help, shoved from one country to another without a home._

 _For a moment, he saw those same eyes staring at him from Marco's face and his stomach lurched with fear._

" _They have courage?" He tried for a rallying tone. "To dance nude with stomachs like that? I agree. Would that we could, Marco." He patted his own belly, rounder than before with all of Rome's good pasta._

 _Marco chuckled. The sound barely lifted the dust motes in the air. He fell silent again, too soon._

 _When he spoke next, his voice croaked._

" _I need your help, Antonio_ amico mio."

 _Anthony felt the fear slither to his stomach. The old, paralysing terror that led him to stand, to stutter like a fool. Eventually, to run._

 _Before he could run, Marco spoke again. "I have left it too late."_

" _No, Marco, surely not…"_

"Si _, Antonio. Too late. In two days, they will come for my family. Our home, it has be requisitioned,_ capisci? _A German officer, he requires it. My family and I, we are to be moved to a new village. Somewhere in the north. Perhaps Turin. Perhaps Milan."_

 _Perhaps further. Perhaps over the border. Perhaps the work camps in Germany or the ghettos in Poland or…_

" _Can't you speak with someone? Marco, you are a powerful man, you have many friends…"_

" _Powerful?" Now the chuckle was harsh as a death-rattle. "I have not been powerful for months, Anthony. Years. If ever. Money buys everything but these people… they don't trade currencies, Anthony. They trade souls."_

 _Marco shuddered in his coat. "I have no one left to ask, Anthony."_

" _I can't." His voice was strange. Always reedy, it seemed to have thinned to less than a child's treble. "Marco, my life is precarious enough. If I step beyond the line…"_

" _You know people. You know who to ask."_

" _I can't." The words repeated themselves in an echo. A hollow drum of sound. The tick of a clock's hands in the library in France. The clip of heeled shoes walking away from him in the gallery._

" _I can't. I can't. I can't…"_

* * *

 **I promised an update! Hope you enjoyed this, late as it is. There's still one more part that's in the works so I hope you'll hang in there. I have a week's holidays right now and have been savouring the thought of getting some writing done at last!**

 **Also, for anyone who's interested, both Kappler and Monsignor O'Flaherty are real people. Hugh O'Flaherty was an Irish priest, known as the Pimpernel of the Vatican, who arranged to smuggle escaped Allied POWs from camps in Germany, Austria & Italy back to Britain. His story is told in the great film _The Scarlet and the Black,_ starring Gregory Peck as Hugh O'Flaherty and Christopher Plummer as Obersturmbannführer Kappler - well worth watching if you have a spare few hours!**

 **Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed. ;)**


	4. Chapter 4

**CHIAROSCURO**

* * *

 _December 12th, 1943_

 _Rome, Italy._

* * *

" _Soldaten!_ Present… arms!"

The grey uniforms merged with the pre-dawn drizzle. Anthony's eyes blurred, smearing the men's faces into a line of pink. Or that could have been the blow to his temple, delivered two days ago from a frustrated _Kriminalinspektor._

Somewhere above him, in the bowels of the building, a faint voice rose in yet another _Ave Maria_.

Anthony lifted his head to the sound. His bones creaked and God! his skull was so heavy on his neck, his shoulders could scarcely support the weight. He tried to turn back, to halt the relentless march onwards but the guards merely gripped his thin arms tighter and dragged him until his feet scrabbled uselessly on the hard concrete.

When he was a young man, he had gone shooting in Scotland once. They had bagged a stag, he and his friends, and in celebration they decided to follow the gillies back on foot. They had taken it in turns to gloat over the kill, now trussed up on sticks with a hundred knots, like a prisoner it was, and wedged on top of the gillies' shoulders.

Anthony could remember the limp _poc-poc_ the stag's cloven hooves had made every time it dropped close the ground. The limp, almost obscene twisting of dead limbs when the slender legs dragged across the ground in time with the rough march of the Scotsmen. Vitality and pride, reduced by brute force to little more than a lump of meat. He had grieved then, silently, and at odds with his friends.

He wondered if anyone would grieve now. If anyone would know.

There was a stake, thrust into the ground at the centre of the far wall. Anthony and his guards stumbled past the line of soldiers, standing to attention in the middle of the tiny barrack square. The size of village schoolroom, it was little more than fifteen paces long and half as wide.

His guards shoved him to a stand against the support of the stake. His hands were jerked behind him and tied together with thin wire. When he sagged against the restraints, it cut into his skin. The shorter one came around the front. His forehead was red and peeling with sunburn under the brim of his cap. He jabbed something into Anthony's shirt. It pricked the skin.

When Anthony looked down, he saw a white square fluttering on his lapel.

Memories of another war slid into his mind. Another war, other men he had stood and observed in this post. Some screaming, some silent, finally showing the courage that had deserted them in the trenches and caused them to be dragged before Anthony's court martial. The fate that had threatened to break upon him in that gloomy library in the French _château._

 _The wheel has come full circle._ The quote from his school days echoed in his head. There was almost a relief in it. Fate had finally caught up on his heels.

But not quite.

A shadow of black slithered to his shoulder. A full uniform, ill-fitting as always. _Kriminalinspektor_ Heuth gripped Anthony's bony shoulder. His finger cut into what little flesh there remained like the pincers of a crab.

"You have one chance, Strallan." The whisper made his English so much harsher. Anthony closed his eyes and imagined Marco's sing-song trill. The clipped, soothing tones of his old valet. Even the thick brogue of the Monsignor O'Flaherty. For a moment, he dared to imagine Edith.

"One chance." There was a desperation in the whisper the _Kriminalinspektor_ could not quite hide. "We know everything. We know you have contacts in the guerrillas. We know you were the lynchpin in organising the Bianchis' escape. We know you are the contact in Rome for that devil in the Vatican. We know _all_ this."

" _Tell us where they are._ "

A hand slithered between Anthony's arms. A sharp tug, a wrench that dragged the twisted limbs back and nearly out of their sockets. Even through the delirium that hung over him like a mist, Anthony felt the pain and moaned. The low whine of an animal pushed beyond all living limits.

But he did not speak.

He did not speak as the uniformed inspector stepped back. He did not speak as the drill sergeant roared out his orders and the soldiers set their rifles to their shoulders. He did not speak as they went up to bind his eyes, only shook his head away until they ceased.

He did not speak, as he had not spoken a single word from the day O'Flaherty had come to take his confession.

He rolled his head upwards. The day was clear blue, the morning sky still tinged with pink from sunrise. A bird flew up from the Tiber, far below. It peeped in the cloudless sky, the sunlight glimmering on its wing tips like morning dew.

He thought of Marco, smuggled out of Rome in a fruit truck, his nieces and nephews clustered around him. He thought of O'Flaherty, on his knees in the Vatican, plotting and praying with equal measure.

He thought of Edith. He thought of Edith in her blue driving coat, her golden-brown curls clustered around her wide, smiling eyes. He thought of the tilt of her head as she studied his paintings, the touch of her fingers. He thought of her with a brood of children at her feet, her arms wrapped around a daughter with the same golden-brown hair.

He saw the sky and thought-

" _Fire!_ "

* * *

Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty rescued hundreds of soldiers, airmen and ordinary citizens from imprisonment in Nazi-occupied Italy until the Allied liberation in 1944. None of it would have been possible without the assistance of hundreds of unnamed people, willing to use their skills, contacts and influence to ensure safe passage for the escapees out of Italy, to neutral Spain or North Africa.

Some of these unnamed paid for their assistance with their lives.

Marco Bianchi escaped to America in the spring of 1944. He, along with his brother, sister-in-law and five nieces and nephews, found sanctuary in New York. They did not return to Italy until 1956.

In 1993, fifty years after Anthony Strallan's death, Luciano Bianchi, one of those nephews, donated a gallery to the _Academia di Belli Arti._ Filled with a study of English portraiture, it is known as the Strallan wing. A plaque stands at the double doors.

 _This wing would not be possible without the courage of a man who valued those he loved more than himself._

* * *

 **So it's done.**

 **Most of you probably saw the way it was going for poor old Anthony. At the same time, I like to think he'd be satisfied with this death. He seems like a self-sacrificing character, based on the TV show and while this has not always worked out in the short term, in the long term he has regained his self-respect.**

 **Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this short vignette and thank you for sticking with me to the end! If you've any suggestions or comments, I always love to get them! And just in case you think they're not appreciated, thank you to everyone who has reviewed already... you have no idea what a boost it is to hear that someone likes reading your work, you put a smile on my face every time!**

 **I should be updating/posting other Downton fanfictions soon so keep an eye out!**


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